In Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series, there is a species who actually breathes methane. The focus though is less on how that actually happens and more on how they navigate as the only species for whom oxygen is toxic. It’s a great series, btw. It’s a not-quite-as-optimistic as star trek future, but still optimistic and with a vast range of species who are all intermingling as learning how to get along.
Added this to my reading list, looks good. Thanks!
New loyalist chapter name
Everybody in this thread needs to read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
And also go in without knowing anything about it
That’s what I did. Right after reading Artemis. PHM is way better.
For those who haven’t read it:
Jazz hands, bitches!
That’s all you get.
goddamn amazing book
Came here for this comment. Also the great oxidation event.
So you’re telling me if I stop breathing I’ll never get older? I’m in!
Technically true, yes
will I still have to work?
Probably.
once they figure out an altered carbon-esque way of backing up our consciousness, then absolutely.
Rusting your insides
This reminds me of an excellent short story over on r/writingprompts. It’s about how humans evolved in the harshest conditions as a forgotten experiment. They emerge and are basically gods.
Wait, this is not in hfy?
They say a planet like earth I’d very rare. Rarer still to find life on one. I believe life is as abundant in the universe as it is here. Which means to me, in our neck of the universe we are an oddity.
If aliens exist they would probably have many things just as strange. They would also need a way to harvest energy via some cycle. It is possible they would require even more reactive substances to live.
We’re also reliant on water and are mostly made out of it. water is such a “universal solvent”, it’s quite OP. It dissolves so much, that we don’t even think about it
We’re death breathers, but also basically have acid blood like xenomorphs
Death breathers are made of electric thinking meat. Life is fucking rad.
I’m just going to ask because I think this is true but I’m not certain and nobody’s talking about it. Antioxidants are BS right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidative_stress#Diseases
Antioxidants may help with some of those conditions, but others are based on such underlying dysfunction that it would be like trying to bailing out a boat with big hole in the side. They’re just not gonna do anything for you.
The dietary antioxidant fad is mostly BS. They’re supposedly meant to counteract oxidative stress and specifically free radicals. Both of those things are part of a healthy life and you would die without them. So any real impact is not so simple as “just counteract those bad things”. Dietary antioxidants don’t always lead to higher intracellular antioxidant levels, either.
Some dietary antioxidants so lead to higher intracellular levels and may help buffer oxidative stress (like from exercise) but there isn’t much evidence that it doesn’t just boil down to “eating your vegetables is good for you”.
Oxidative Stress is not part of a healthy life. It’s literally stress on your cells ability to respirate and detoxify. It causes DNA fragmentation in low amounts and apoptosis/cell death among other serious biological complications like cancer with high enough severity.
Sleeping more (and in tact with your circadial rhytm) and drinking more water keeps the oxidans at a lower level tho, keeping you healthier in age. That or fasting like a fakir your whole life, keeping your cells in an “safe energy and clean up” mode.
A bit Overblown, but not really bs, from what I researched a bit ago
Sol 3 is a Class-14 Deathworld on what used to be a thirteen-point scale until they found it.
Not only is the planet very geothermally volatile with active volcanic systems AND feature violent and chaotic weather systems…
“Earth” is the deepest gravity well they’ve ever witnessed chemical rocketry successfully achieve orbit from.
The biosphere is teeming with pathogens, so much so that the sapient population’s own bodies rely on symbiotic microbial colonies in order to digest nutrients among other tasks.
And the macroscopic fauna are ALMOST as scary as the microscopic stuff: every biome packed with highly adapted predators.
At the top of this complex carnal carnival of carnivory, the “humans” who live there are unstoppable pursuit and persistence predators highly naturally gifted in ranged combat that historically used to just WALK their prey to death. The animals which ancient humans consumed could sprint to temporary safety, but humans will catch up, ALWAYS catch up, and the prey will still be tired when they have to sprint again. Eventually the fatigue outpaces them, and humans catch up for the last time. Just walk right up and bash them with a rock, they might not even have to throw it: dinner is ready!
Furthermore, it’s not just the highly volatile oxygen that all the animals there breathe… Sol 3’s atmosphere also even contains a constant background presence of radon. The biosphere is passively resistant to some levels of radiation. One of the cities was consumed in the fallout cloud of an exploding nuclear fission reactor(they STILL use water to cool their municipal fission reactors even now!), and although the humans fled, the animals that stayed there are FLOURISHING. Deformed and mutated, but thriving.
NOBODY SANE CHOOSES TO GO TO SOL 3.
Sol 3:
HarmlessMostly harmlesscomplex carnal carnival of carnivory
Beautiful.
More of this please
Over on reddit there’s an entire genre of this sort of fiction in /r/hfy
The main contributor continued writing it on a full novel scale at https://deathworlders.com/ .
However…Imho after about 40 chapters, it really loses it’s way (bar a couple of cool minor plots). And the author goes a bit right wing rhetoric/muscleporn-y.
Read the first 2 chapters, and so far seems pretty neat.
God help me, I fought all the way through that 8,000 page monstrosity. I never want to read homoerotic fiction as long as I live, got quite enough of sweaty, muscly men and aliens rubbing all over each other.
I just got frustrated with it.
spoiler
You’ve got the battle for the survival of an entire planet after they all got biodroned.
How many chapters that actually detail what happened? It felt like all it did was go
spoiler
Attack announced, humans arrive and set up a beach head, daar flattens a few cities in the background.
Then spends more time talking about how he is burdened and manly as a result of doing it than the actual doing.
The Hell storyline after that gave me hope, as I trudged through chapters of “cor, look at Adam’s muscular muscles muscling”, but once that finished, and we started getting storylines like “Why can’t we have guns in Folctha? Murica!”, I kinda gave up.
The entire ecosystem is also part plastic.
In one of their multitude of inter-nation conflicts; two cities were consumed in nuclear fire. On any sane world; these areas would be abandoned and the area around them a quarantine zone; the humans obviously not being fully sane, rebuilt and flourish.
This is related to the fact that humans along with most of the inhabitants of Sol3, are highly resilient to damage; of all kinds.
Humans reproduce slowly; but even though they generally reproduce not far above replacement rate, their resilience means their population still grows at an exponential rate. And on top of that; their advances in medical technology are on the verge of massive life extension. Soon they will have to move out into space; the galaxy better get ready for them.
Explains why we tend to spontaneously combust at times
Aliens would need an oxidizer to metabolize as well, even if that oxidizer isn’t oxygen. If they want to actually efficiently get energy out of things, it’ll need to be a strong one. Even fermentation is a oxidation-reduction reaction that just doesn’t use oxygen.
If we ever found a species that was made of alcohol we would absolutely dominate, err domestic them as quickly as possible.
Powerful oxidizers are dangerous stuff!
One I’ve learned about recently (and used) is potassium permanganate. One of its uses is for improving water quality in fish ponds. It oxidizes basically all organic matter. It can simultaneously knock out algae, bacteria, parasites, hormones, and other excess organic waste. And the pathogens it kills can’t build up resistance to it like they would an antibiotic or poison, so it can be used preventively without creating stronger bugs. You can’t really build resistance to BURNING outside video games.
But that also means that if you add too much, you can just as easily sterilize all life in a body of water, including fish and anything else you want to keep.
AND it means you need to be careful when handling it. If you burn your eyes or your lungs, it makes them stop working!
If you burn your eyes or your lungs, it makes them stop working!
Top tip right here.
The more you know! 💫
It feels like a loading screen tip, and I’m scraping my head as to for what kind of game it would be the tip.
Minecraft
